Pro Bono Reflections – Ep.8: Four Walls and a Door

Second graders should be spending their time practicing subtraction and building baking soda volcanos. But our 8-year-old client – we’ll call him James – instead learned how to bathe in a communal sink and take two bus lines to get from a makeshift homeless shelter to school.
 
In Episode 8: Four Walls and a Door, Partner Allison Holt Ryan and Senior Associate Lance Murashige describe the conditions where James, his grandmother, and other homeless families stayed during the “polar vortex” that swept through D.C. in 2014. On top of the already traumatic impact of homelessness on the child, James was sleeping on a gymnasium floor next to strangers, using a shared bathroom with men he didn’t know, with no alternative but a laundromat or a bench in Union Station. With our help, James and other homeless children were provided with the safety and stability of private rooms on freezing nights.
 
Also in this episode, Senior Counsel Stan Brown and Chava Brandriss, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, discuss the 13-year legal battle to eliminate an exclusionary zoning ordinance on Long Island that intentionally and unlawfully discriminated against people of color.